Your Guide To Google Algorithm Updates

If you are the owner of a website then you are going to be affected by Google algorithm updates even if you have no idea what they are. Indeed, you may only know them by names such as Penguin or Hummingbird, but what do they actually mean for you? How do they manage to make a difference to where your site ranks on their search engine?

Always Changing

The problem in providing a guide is that Google make numerous tweaks and changes over the course of a single year and indeed it is not unusual for there to be over 500 changes in the space of 12 months. That is why we need to avoid looking at the updates themselves on an individual basis and instead look at the bigger picture to avoid being bogged down in technical jargon that would just be too boring for most people.

However, what we can do is to look more closely at the kind of things that Google do change on a regular basis as this gives you a better understanding of what you need to do to your own website in order to prevent yourself from being penalized as a result.

Who/What Google Targets

There is a tendency by Google to look at tackling websites that are often guilty of spam and that in itself is a good thing. They target sites that use link farms, poor content where it is all about the keywords to get visitors there to then sell them something, and anything else that does not offer any real value to the person landing on the website.

This has been seen in updates such as Penguin, as well as Panda which preceded it, and then Hummingbird looked at changing the way that keywords are valued in order to provide us with more accurate search results.

In between major updates, such as the before mentioned Penguin update, there are always a number of minor tweaks and even those changes can really upset the algorithm and completely change how your website is ranked.

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Google will often produce an update in order to tackle certain types of results such as making it harder for payday loan companies that spam to rank highly, or tackle websites that are all about mugshots even though this was controversial.

They will also make changes to ensure that better quality content will boost your ranking, but even here they will make slight alterations that can really change the type of content you should have, so staying alert is essential.

It's Not All Bad

It is important to realize that changes to the Google algorithm can either have a positive or a negative impact on your website, and how it changes it does depend on whether or not you sit on the right or wrong side of the regulations.

The only good thing is that you can often follow a trend with their updates, so you can see where the Penguin update is going and make changes in advance although this is not an exact science and you could easily come unstuck.

That is merely a simple guide to Google Algorithm updates and you can be sure that further updates will follow as Google plays around with what they feel is important in the world of search. The key here is to try to not fall foul of their new regulations as and when they come out, but considering you have no idea what they are thinking of next do realize that this may be harder than you thought.

  Henry Hernandez

About the Author:

Henry Hernandez is an expert at SEO tactics and techniques as well as CEO of TexaSEO, an Austin SEO Company. Henry can be found on Google+.